Judith Regan may be gone from the publishing world (at least for now), but her projects live on (at least for now). Last we heard about her orphaned volumes of controversy, an attention-seeking Canadian publisher was proclaiming its interest in bringing out O.J.'s confession. (Not, you know, that anyone asked, or that they held rights to it.) Today's news, buried as a squib in the Times, is that Lyons Press, a division of Globe Pequot, has agreed to publish 7: The Mickey Mantle Novel, another controversial project from the late-Regan period. The pub date has yet to be announced, and the print run is pegged at 250,000. "I think all the negative publicity came from people who haven't read it," Gene Brissie, Globe Pequot's associate publisher, told the Times, perhaps a touch aggressively. Of course, as New York's Vanessa Grigoriadis reported a few weeks ago, the Mantle book — and not the disastrous O.J. project — is what really got Regan fired from HarperCollins. So we can imagine why Brissie would be playing a strong defense.
7, Mantle Novel, Finds a Publisher [NYT]
Even Bitches Have Feelings [NYM]

• The NYPD is developing a scary trend in the people-killing arena. Another man, this one in the Bronx, was fatally shot by the cops last night — four times and at very close range, witnesses say. He was armed, at least. [amNY]
• Both tabloids lead with Yoko Ono's extortion news, which we reported yesterday; today's added value is the following tidbit: The driver claims that rock's First Widow is just trying to stop him from proceeding with a valid sexual-harassment case against her. Eww. [NYP]
• It's hard to top If I Did It, so Judith Regan's next book project is a "biographical novel" about Mickey Mantle. Tame enough, except it calls Billy Martin a rapist and includes fictional scenes of Mantle sexin' Marilyn Monroe, who just "lies there staring at him." [NYDN]
• The Times continues its disturbing — and sometimes darkly hilarious — series on New York's deranged small-town justice. In this one, a judge sentences young male cons to "judge's probation," which involves them hanging out with him, driving his car, and, in one case, moving in with him. [NYT]
• And Peter Boyle is dead at 71. Judging from the headlines, the press seems intent on remembering this fantastic character actor (one of John Lennon's best friends, by the way) as the dad on Everybody Loves Raymond, to which we can only respond: Go rent Taxi Driver. Now. [WNBC]
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